What is a meteor shower

A meteor is a space rock or meteoroid that enters Earth's atmosphere. As the space rock falls toward Earth, the resistance or drag of the air on the rock makes it extremely hot. What we see is a "shooting star." That bright streak is not actually the rock, but rather the glowing hot air as the hot rock zips through the atmosphere. When Earth encounters many meteoroids at once, we call it a meteor shower.

The meteoroids are usually small, from dust particle to boulder size. They are almost always small enough to quickly burn up in our atmosphere, so there's little chance any of them will strike Earth's surface. But there is a good chance that you can see a beautiful shooting star show in the middle of the night!